Friday 29 January 2016

Things will change.


                                

My two neighbours, on whom I rely heavily, have no young family members who wish to continue farming. My nearest neighbour has a daughter who has become an accountant, and has never shown any interest in the farm. My other neighbour has two children neither of whom will take the baton; and in fact she doesn't even want them to.

So what will become of these farms? The only future I can see for them is to be bought by English or Dutch families, and be used for either breeding horses or some sort of holiday centres. Certainly there's little appetite for farming around here.

For years I've been trying to buy a small parcel of woodland, so that we could eventually become as self-sufficient as possible, but succession laws are still making this difficult. If my neighbours were not there to cut and deliver wood every winter, we could easily find ourselves in a difficult situation. Our house needs to be heated from about November to May.

I don't wish to sound morbid, but I quite expect myself to expire before either of my neighbours, so I could easily just shrug my shoulders and say to my heirs 'you'll have to sort it out by yourselves', but I'm not like that. I've spent the past 40-ish years trying to create a tiny haven of healthy, eco-friendly, and economic living, and all this could change if we were no longer able to buy quite large stocks of wood each year. It is a major element of our lives.


I blame myself for the situation, as I should have bought myself a home that had everything required to sustain my desired lifestyle, but we never get everything right. In an area such as this we rely heavily on wood, as do the farmers on selling it.

The only alternative that I can foresee, is to smother the place with pig-ugly solar panels, and heat our home with electricity. This might be OK up at the barn, but not here.  

A solution will arise, but for the moment I can't envisage it; unless of course we can buy that bit of woodland.


45 comments:

  1. What are succession laws? Seems to me that the current owners could sell you a bit of woodland if they don't care for it....

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    1. In France you can't disinherit someone, so over time property and land becomes owned by all sorts of people. Trying to decide who owns what, or who can sell what, becomes a nightmare.

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    2. So does this mean they cannot move house if they want to, or sell the odd bit of woodland? Seems very odd to me.

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  2. I've heard and read that French succession laws are an absolute nightmare, and one of the reasons we didn't retire to France - the winter weather being another. French laws are much worse than those here in Spain, which are confusing enough. Fortunately we are able to make English-style wills,(or wills according to our country of origin) which are "honoured" by Spanish law.

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    1. For all English people living in other EU countries, it has now all changed, and you can leave whatever you like to whoever you like and it will be respected by your country of residence. If only the French would do the same for the French.

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    2. ..and the Spanish for the Spanish too.

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  3. Cro, we also rely on wood... We have a modern log burning boiler....
    Forced airflow...burns upside-down...93% efficient...produces pure woodash for the potager and verger...12 to14 half-metre logs gives 2000 litres of hot water....does underfloor and hot water for 48 hours on average.
    As I am not getting any younger... and as "herself" has developed the Parkies.....we are considering a plaquette version of the same machine. Doesn't involve any lifting&moving of logs....woodchips are delivered and loaded into a hopper....Archie Medes invented the feed between the hopper and the boiler...logs are between 2 and 2.50 euros per heating unit as opposed to electric at 11 and oil at 14! Plaquettes are more expensive than logs...but burn even more efficiently at 95 to 97%....and cheaper than wood pellets....at around 2.50 to 3.50 euros. You just need the space for the boiler and the two 1000 litre "batteries"....and with the woodchips, some extra room for a 3m-cube hopper....for us, the shed next door to the boiler house.

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    Replies
    1. We just have a wood burning cooker, and a wood burning stove (amongst other less eco-systems). I think we get through about 8 cu metres of mixed oak and chestnut per annum. If we were re-designing this house (which is 300 years old) we would probably have done things quite differently, but the eco-systems of today weren't around when we began the work about 40 years ago.

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    2. And any retro-fitting is normally a right bugaroo!!
      However, there are always ways around any problem...
      in the longère it will be radiators with the hot water plumbing in the grenier and passing down into the rooms below....
      saves going through the thick walls.

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  4. If there is some woodland out there meant for you it will find you Cro....as you say 'a solution will arise'.

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    Replies
    1. I think we will get it eventually, it's only a small patch of about one hectare.

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  5. I sincerely hope that you and Lady M find a suitable solution Cro. Trying to forge a personal lifestyle appears to be getting harder and harder.

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    Replies
    1. "THEY" do not want any of us to have a personal lifestyle...it makes us less governable!!

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    2. You wish they'd just 'leave you alone'.

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  6. We use EdF's electricity (80plus % nuclear) and heating oil now having knocked the wood burner on the head 3 yrs ago, with oil prices down this year our fuel costs will be around €2000. This includes the Christmas lights, but not Boiler serviceing. Both get delivered to the house and, as I've said before, don't need chopping and humping about like the wood!.

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    Replies
    1. Our heating costs are about €500, but that doesn't include my fees for sawing, chopping, and bad back!

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  7. A number of my friends have had to contend with French inheritance laws. As you say they can be a real nightmare if even just one of a dozen people can't be found or just refuses to agree because his brother kicked him one day behind the barn.

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    Replies
    1. Graham, that changed as of January...it now requires just a simple majority!

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    2. Thank you for that information LaPré DelaForge. That is good news.

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    3. Forgetting which year I'm in....
      must be the fog outside...
      that's Jan 2015!!

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    4. Yes, things are now better, but in our case it's two sisters who are squabbling.

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  8. Your situation underlines yet again Cro how very lucky we are to live here. Many of our trees - alder, ash and the odd oak - some very old hawthorn -are old and in storms like the one we are having today something always comes down - a branch, or even a whole tree. Then on wet days the farmer saws and stacks to dry and we never run out of wood. We tend to take it foregranted.

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    Replies
    1. You also have your little brook, which I feel is another essential (which I also don't have).

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  9. I suppose dying of cold could be the answer? No, buy that bit of woodland.

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    Replies
    1. We really haven't been too cold this winter (so far), I think our lowest has been Zero C. I can live with that!

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  10. I'm sure that something will happen to sort it all out Cro ..... it usually does { I am ever the optimist with my glass always brimming over !! } Do you have to chop all of your wood and what will happen when maybe, you can't chop it anymore ? { Sorry, I just contradicted my optimistic policy } !!! XXXX

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    1. We buy everything in one metre lengths, so some chain-sawing is required. I'm still OK with that for the moment, but I can envisage a time when I would need it done by someone else. Not yet though!

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  11. Can you not go slightly further afield for your wood cro?

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    1. I could, but when one's had the luxury of buying from friends at a friend's price, it'll be hard to start looking around for other suppliers. I can see a time when wood will become expensive and difficult to find, even though we live in a very heavily wooded area.

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  12. We have a similar problem in attempting to buy a small field next to ours. We would like it to rotate grazing and growing some more willow. it is not good land, but we would find it useful. The old farmer won't sell, but two of his sons will when he dies(!!) but the other two don't want to.
    Hopefully when your son comes to live close he will help with the sawing when you start to find it difficult.
    Incidentally, our granddaughter, who lives with us, is now dating a tree surgeon.. how good it that?! We are encouraging the match.
    Gill

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    Replies
    1. The woodland we want to buy is rubbish. There's a lot of dead wood, and a lot of scrubby thin useless stuff. But it would keep us going 'for ever'.

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  13. Stay positive and keep doing what you're doing. Your blog helps I'm sure; it spreads the word of what you stand for and live by.

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    Replies
    1. I probably sound a little pessimistic above, but in fact I'm a very positive person. All will come right.

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  14. Same here, except lots of trees. My kids like the city life and all it offers and have no wish to even come to the farm more than once or twice a year. The grands love to, but we will be selling it in the not to distant future after more than 30 years.

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    1. I don't know who my neighbours would sell TO. As I said above it would probably only appeal to foreigners, who wouldn't dream of farming in any traditional sense. A sad prospect.

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  15. We have a similar problem: our woodman is talking about 'slowing down' next year prior to retiring. His son has another job so it looks like a search to find another supplier.

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    1. Oh dear; looks like my fears are already being realised.

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  16. We try to be as green as possible. In our last home we felled and cut our own wood The old saying states that it heats you three times, once to fell, twice to cut and the third time when you burn the logs. In our present home we don't have trees to cut and the wood comes ready to bung straight into the stove so it only heats us the once! We also have an air-source heat pump which is run off some plug-ugly solar panels, as is the Aga and, like you, we grow a good amount of organic food. Ours is also a very old house and our solutions are not the greenest but they are the best that we can manage so I don't beat myself up about it too much.
    I hope that your worst fears are not realised concerning your neighbours land.

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    Replies
    1. There's a world market for more attractive solar panels; or even invisible ones. None of us can be entirely 'green', but doing our best is essential.

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  17. In Spain, on the Camino de Santiago, I stayed at a very old Albergue heated by a stove that burnt wood pellets. These were spheres about 1.5 cms in diameter. The owners said they used these because they had nowhere to store wood. Later, in Galicia, I saw a factory which produced these pellets. Just a thought...

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  18. Lots on Wikipedia about those pellets!

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    1. I think a lot of the locally felled twisted or wonky wood goes to make these. Of course you need a very special system (with hoppers etc) to burn them.

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  19. terribly expensive, but solar, are solar tiles for the roof. roof is shingled with special solar shingles. if you get lots of snow, though, i don't see how they could work. they are very attractive and blend in.

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